The Man On The Moon
by Steve61
Summary: Apollo 19 astronauts Nelson Mitchell and Billy Dillon discover that they are not alone on the Moon.


_Mare Imbrium, the Moon, August 9th, 1973:_

Astronaut Nelson Mitchell looked out at the beautiful desolation of the cratered Moon and sighed.

_He was on the Moon! _He really _was _here!

He and Dillon were busy setting up various pieces of scientific equipment designed by the greatest minds back on Earth, and had travelled almost three miles away from the site of the lunar module_ Constellation _in their Lunar Roving Vehicle, a 460 pound, 10-foot long dune buggy-like vehicle that had proven invaluable for lunar missions going back to _Apollo 14. _

All the years of training at NASA and waiting for one Apollo mission after another to be completed just so he could command _Apollo 19_, had finally paid off. And now here he was, one of the latest humans to set foot on this cratered, jagged, dusty ball of dust that orbited the Earth. Him and his co-pilot, Lieutenant Billy Dillon.

And the old man driving across the moonscape with his old-fashioned yellow car.

_WHAT THE HELL?!_

Mitchell swung around as far as he could within his cumbersome space suit, but even then the rays of the sun above his head created a flashing glare on his helmet shield, making him blink rapidly, and lose track of what he thought he saw.

"You okay, sir?" asked the voice of Dillon in his earphones. Apparently he'd heard his commander's gasp over the radio.

"Uh...yeah. Yeah. No problem," Mitchell lied, knowing that if he uttered a word of what he saw, not only would his superiors back at NASA have him committed, but the live television transmissions would give witness to his insanity to the entire world!

Mitchell assumed it was just a weird trick of the light, a vague memory of something that popped up out of nowhere, so he went back to work on setting up a seismic device that would measure any and all tremors that the Moon displayed, even if it was just as gentle as a blink. He set up the device nice and steady in the regolith moon dust, and used the weak gravity of the Moon to hop back up to his feet, and turned around to find Dillon.

He saw the man and his car again!

And this time the man saw him, too, and actually waved back, offering a pleasant smile back at him, as if he was driving past him in front of a park and not on the airless Moon!

_This was impossible! _his mind screamed defiantly back at him.

Mitchell watched with utter shock as the man with the thick curly white hair, dressed in what could only be described as opera-like with a ruffled shirt and sunglasses (to protect his eyes against the bright glare of the Sun on the lunar landscape, no doubt), scooted by some sixty feet away, driving a yellow open top, four-seater jalopy.

_But without space suit or any form of environmental system whatsoever!_

What the hell was happening to him?!

Nobody could exist on the Moon without protection of some kind, and they sure as heck wouldn't be driving some old yellow clunker that couldn't possibly have been transported up to the Moon! And yet, as Nelson Mitchell followed the progress of the strange man, he watched as the mysterious intruder passed behind a rocky ridge, and continued on beyond it.

"OHMYGOD!" screamed Dillon in Mitchell's ears. The Commander flinched and heard Dillon attempt to recover. "I mean, wow, that hurt. I hurt myself. Yeah, that's it."

Mitchell turned around and saw that Dillon was facing the same direction as he'd just been looking, and did a quick estimation, but knew that his partner had seen the same impossible mirage as he just had.

"What did you see?! What did you see, Dillon?!" Mitchell cried out.

"Me?! Nothing! _Nothing!"_

"Lieutenant Dillon; I order you to tell me what you just saw!"

"I wasn't-"  
"Was it an old man driving a car?!" Mitchell barked, in no mood to take any guff.

"'An old man whaaat? No, It couldn't be, but, but, but, if you saw something, then how could it be the same as-? SIR?!"

"Get in!"

"SIR!"

"I said 'get in, Lieutenant! That's an order!"

Dillon watched as Commander Mitchell used the low gravity to hop towards their lunar buggy, and figured he'd better join his crazy-as-a-fox superior officer, unless he wanted to be left behind! He hustled as best as he could in the clumsy space suit, and barely had one leg inside the cramped seat before Mitchell put the damned thing in 'drive' and lurched forward.

"We've got to find him! We've got to!"

"Find whooo?!" Dillon cried out, confused and more than a little freaked out. "An impossible astronaut?! If you saw what I saw-"

"Old man in a yellow car without a spacesuit!" Mitchell shouted.

"-then we've_ both _gone bonkers and we're going to look like a pair of crazies to NASA! They'll bust us out of the service so quick, we'll-"

"They won't! Look!" Mitchell snapped, slamming the buggy to a stop and pointing at the surface.

Dillon rose and uttered an expletive that would make a sailor blush. He looked at the wide tires of the lunar buggy with their dune-buggy-like treads and then at the thinner trails ahead of them and back and forth, knowing that they didn't match! Whatever they saw, it was creating a real trail in the Moon's surface!

"There he goes! We've gotta keep up!" Mitchell insisted, flopping back down in his seat and pressing the accelerator, jolting the astronauts forward at a meagre seven miles per hour, but at least they has a course to follow, now that Mitchell had noticed the spray of lunar dust in the air springing up from the old man's tires.

"Sir, this is insane! We_ can't _be following some old guy in an old car! _We can't! _There's no air on the Moon! He doesn't have a space suit! He doesn't-"

"All the more reason to follow this- there! There he is! What's he doing?" Mitchell asked, stopping the rover.

He and Dillon watched as the old man in the ruffles used a stick with a claw on one end to reach out and grab one of the instruments that he and his shipmate had set up a few miles from the lunar module. There even seemed to be a glow along the stick, as it extended beyond the safety of the open-air car. Mitchell had a thought and swung his anti-glare visor down and suddenly he could see a faint glow around the automobile, as if it was encased within a protective shield of faint blue air or something.

"He's got the _A.S.T.R.O_.!" Dillon shouted. "Hey! Hey, you!" he shouted again, standing up and forgetting that nobody could hear him but his commanding officer. "Hands off that! That's government property!"

"Dillon, shut up and sit down! Hold on so I can drive over there and stop him!"

The old man had the device in his front seat, and seemed ready to fiddle with it, or break it, until he noticed the Lunar Rover racing towards him. He shook his head in frustration, and put his own automobile in 'drive', and tried to escape the two astronauts, but not very effectively, as his tires weren't made for the soft, dusty surface of the Moon!

He looked over his shoulder, and clicked his tongue in annoyance, grumbling to himself, "Typical! You try to save the Earth and there's always _somebody_ snooping about to mess up the simplest of plans! Come on, Bessie! Let's get some distance from those two nincompoops!"

As he turned this way and that way in a vain attempt to lose the two American astronauts, the old man had to steady the rocking _A.S.T.R.O., _or _Automatic Solar Transmission Radio and Observatory _as it was known to NASA, lest it slip out of the old yellow car nicknamed 'Bessie' by her owner.

He found himself driving straight ahead for a quarter mile until he noted a sudden drop in the terrain up ahead, forcing him to yank the steering wheel to the right and continue on. He looked over his shoulder and watched as the astronauts very nearly went over the ridge, themselves, which was something he certainly didn't want to happen.

"Jehosephat! That was too close!" the old man frowned, looking over his shoulder, relieved that the NASA men hadn't hurt themselves, but annoyed that they refused to cut off their pursuit of him.

He fiddled with his radio in his dash board with one hand, bouncing over uneven terrain as he looked ahead of him and behind him, until he found the frequency he wanted.

"-running low! The batteries will-" one voice said, only to be interrupted by the other.

"I can do this! We're gaining on him!" insisted the other. "Cernan set a record driving his Rover up to 11.2 miles per hour, so let's see if this crate get do 13 or 14!"

"Sir! We're past the point of no return! See?! We're driving _away _from the lunar module!"

"No! I can't give up! I won't! Not when we're so close now!"  
"Sir!"

"Almost there!"

The old man looked over his shoulder and saw that the NASA astronauts were indeed too close, so he yanked his steering wheel hard to the left and spun up dust and debris as he and the Lunar Rover drove in circles around each other over and over, until it seemed like they were inside a lunar tornado that neither could see out of.

The man in the yellow car waved them away, seemingly getting angrier at the endless chase, until the Rover took a wrong turn and bounced over an innocent moon rock that was barely able to be driven over by the Rover. The astronauts bounced around in their buggy, Dillon nearly falling out in the process.

"Sir! We're done! Look at the gauge!"

Even as the Lunar Rover groaned to an excruciatingly slow crawl, the mission commander barked out indignantly,

"What are you talking about, kid? How can we be out of power already?"

"You used up too much power chasing that crazy guy with the car, Commander! The Rover is too low on power as it is right now, sir. The more we travel, the less juice we have left for the trip back, if we're in constant motion!" Dillon explained. "We'd have to just sit here re-charging for an hour to get enough power to drive back, and as it is, we'll run out of air long before we could crawl back to the Lunar Module! In other words, sir..._we are DEAD!"_

"Damn. Hit the radio transmit switch, kid. We need some advice from 'Upstairs."

With a shaky hand, Billy Dillon reached out and flipped the toggle on the radio, and heard words from his shipmate that sent chills up and down his spine; words he thought he'd never hear in his lifetime.

"Houston...we have a problem."

Both of them just heard static.

Mitchell tried again. "Houston! Houston, come in! We're in trouble up here!"

"Never mind phoning home, gentlemen," an exasperated third voice moaned in their earphones. "I'm blocking your transmission to Earth in the interest of self-preservation...and that of the Earth, herself! It would appear that it's up to me if you two chaps ever expect to set foot on Earth again!"  
"Who said that?!" Mitchell demanded to know, looking about the barren landscape.  
"If you have to ask, you're not quite as clever as I believed you to be!" the voice remarked. "Of course, by chasing me this far at the expense of your own safety, your judgement is rather questionable, I should think!"  
"Show yourself! Who are you?!"

"You're only chance at getting home, obviously. Now be a good chap and get out of that silly little contraption, come over to my vehicle and unhook the grappling hook on my rear fender. Connect that to your moon buggy, and I'll give you a tow to my Ship."

"Your...'ship'?!" Dillon asked, incredulous. Where could someone have landed a spaceship around here without them seeing?!

"Yes, ship. I'll explain later. Just do as I say, hm? I'm backing up now towards you. Oh, and by the way...I'm the Doctor!"

The two astronauts just looked at each other dumbfounded, then looked all about them until the strange old yellow car reappeared from behind a ridge of rocks and backed up towards them as if it was something that could happen any day. The old man- the Doctor- motioned for one of them to come over and take hold of the grappling hook as instructed, so Mitchell gave Dillon a nudge.

"Me?! Why me?!" the suddenly-fearful co-pilot asked, his voice almost breaking.

"Because this is_ my _delusion, and in _my _delusion, _you_ take all the risks! Go, kid!"

Dillon awkwardly climbed out of the Lunar Roving Vehicle and cautiously walked towards the man in the yellow car. His breathing rate had gone up noticeably, and he could feel his heart pounding like a hammer inside his chest, despite the kindly features of the smiling stranger. He could see the hook below the rim of the jalopy's bumper, and bent down on one knee to grasp it, then stand up again. He turned on one heel too quickly and nearly fell back from the lighter gravity, but compensated and steadied himself.

"That's it," the Doctor noted, over their earphones. "Link it up with you own bumper"

After Dillon had done so, he climbed back into the Rover and turned to Mitchell saying, "As delusions to go, this one isn't as bad as the day I ate some of my brother's 'special' brownies, but I'm still freaking out, sir!"

"Join the club!" Mitchell frowned.

"Hang on- here we go!" the Doctor told them.

With a slight jolt as the cable became taut, the Lunar Rover was pulled forward then around to the left, in the general direction of the Lunar Module _Constellation_, but not directly. The astronauts remained silent in expectation of seeing a flying saucer appear before them, and the white-haired man in the opera jacket and frills turn into a four-tentacled Martian or something, but it never happened.

Something even stranger occurred before their eyes!

The man and his car drove around a hill and before them some hundred feet away a blue box appeared in the distance. It had small windows and lettering near the top, beneath a central lantern that glowed on and off like a beacon. The words weren't even in Martian- they were in English and spelled out 'POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX'

Speechless, they watched as the three of them were jostled and bumped as they drove over the rough terrain, then the old man aimed something at the blue box, and the door opened automatically. But, even stranger, the opening was wider than the blue box! A garage-sized entrance appeared before them, forcing the two human astronauts to blink and shake their heads at the optical illusion, but the image remained.

"The TARDIS will pressurize immediately after I close the doors. Don't climb off your contraption until then, yes?"

Neither couldn't speak anyway, or offer an agreement or a dispute, but watched as they were upon the blue box and then suddenly they were in a dimly-lit garage or loading bay of some kind. The doors closed behind them and after a few moments of darkness, the room was illuminated in a medium light, giving them a clear view of a garage / workshop, a workbench off to the right side innudated with bits and pieces and numerous half-built (or broken?) devices and tools.

The old man removed his sunglasses and climbed out of his car and smiled back at his visitors, motioning them to remove their helmets.

"It's quite safe, gentlemen. You can breathe the same air as me in here. Go on."

Mitchell cautiously unlocked his helmet and held his breath, fearing depressurization, but all he felt was a gentle air conditioned breeze of air. He inhaled slightly and exhaled, but couldn't see his breath, nor was his skin frozen. He inhaled deeply, and sure enough, he really _was_ in a normal environment, if the sudden heaviness of his spacesuit was anything to go by! Dillon took the cue from his commander and removed his helmet as well, much to the bemusement of the white-haired man who'd identified himself as 'the Doctor'.

"This is impossible! What we just did was impossible!" Mitchell insisted, looking back at the garage door, imagining the lunar landscape behind it.

"Was it? You've accomplished the impossible today? Then you're catching up to me! I usually accomplish five impossible feats a day!" the Doctor smiled, puttering about with some equipment on the workbench.

"No, I mean _that!" _Mitchell frowned, waving at the door, and bounced slightly on his feet, adding, "And this! Normal gravity in a...in a...in a..."  
"Go ahead and say it, Commander," the Doctor smirked. "Everyone else does! A box that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside."

"And wider! This garage door extended a good six feet beyond the edge of your...box!"

"TARDIS, actually. But, that's not important right now. Getting your little moon car back up to full power is!"

Mitchell and Dillon looked at each other again, with Dillon motioning at the _A.S.T.R.O._ sitting, practically ignored, in the front seat of the Doctor's yellow car. The Commander subtly let Dillon not to mention it just yet.

"Who are you, Doctor?! Who side are you on? Who do you work for? What're you doing on the Moon with...all this...when we're up with the equivalent of tin cans and rubber bands?"

"A friend, to answer you're first question," the Doctor said, stopping himself in midsentence as he thought about something, and offered kind eyes and a friendly smile back at the astronauts as he added, "And that answers your other questions...Mitchell, is it? Yes, I saw you tomorrow on the telly back in UNIT headquarters. There's something about your mission up here to the Moon that I had to see for myself and rectify. Here. Hold this."

Despite his big clunky spacesuit gloves, Mitchell took the copper tube that the Doctor handed him, then watched as the old man attached a small gray and blue box the size of box of crayons to the Moon Rover's silver-zinc potassium hydroxide batteries, then took the copper tube and inserted it into the inner casing of the box.

"There. Good as new!"

Mitchell looked at him and the Rover, confused. "What's 'good as new'? You didn't do anything!"  
"I certainly did!" the Doctor frowned, indignant. "I just boosted your battery power by 261 percent courtesy of a Mogarian single-use booster! You now have enough power to get back to your Lunar Module and keep on going to Mare Crissum if you so desired!"

"How did you do that?!"

The Doctor smiled and tapped his nose, as if sharing a secret. "A magician never reveals his secrets! Let's just say that you got a little help from something you don't need to know about and leave it at that, shall we, there's a good chap!" He patted the buggy and made a face as he got some sticky lunar dust on his fingers, and tried to wipe them off with his other hand, but only got both hands dirty. "Quaint little machine, but I'm sure you'd rather have a drive around the Moon in ol' Bessie here! I must say that this is one of the more unique locales I've taken her!"

"How could you breathe on the Moon's surface without-" Dillon began, only to have the Doctor interrupt him.

"Oh, come now, young man, you didn't really think I was sauntering about in an airless environment with one-sixth Earth gravity without some form of environmental protection, did you?"  
"Well, um..."

"Well, that's what I did. Quite a handy little force field doohicky that I cobbled together one rainy Tuesday afternoon. Came in quite handy today, don't you think?"

"So, um, Doctor, our moon rover is powered up?" Mitchell asked.  
"I told you already, yes."  
"And you're not some kinda evil space alien that wants to hijack us or take us to Mars or something?" Mitchell continued.

"Of course not! Do I look like an Ice Warrior?"  
"A...whaaat?" Dillon asked.

"Then you won't mind if we're on our way?"  
"Certainly."

"With our device, you tried to steal?"

"'Stole'?" the Doctor frowned, indignant. "Now see here, young man-"

"The_ A.S.T.R.O._ is government property! _United States government property!" _Mitchell snapped, outraged.

"So?" the Doctor shrugged.

"So nothing! Give it back!"

"Young man, if I do that, there_ will be no _United States in a year!"

"Because of what? Because you went out of your way to tamper with United States property?" Mitchell sneered.

"Essentially, yes, that is what I'm saying."

Mitchell considered this, but his stern features and wrinkled forehead beneath a tight crew-cut conveyed his opinion long before he spoke again.

"Look, Doctor, we're grateful for you helping to get our Lunar Rover back up and running-"

"What you don't seem to understand, Commander, is that your _A.S.T.R.O. _device is far too technologically-advanced for you to use at the moment. It operates on a frequency that other star-faring races will lock onto and come, guns blazing, on your doorstep! Your silly instrument is like an interstellar flare gun saying, 'Helloooo! Here we are! Please come and invade our resource-rich planet and stay as long as you like!' Cybermen,

Sycorax, Daleks, Ice Warriors- they'll all come knocking, and Earth just isn't ready for that!"

"The United States is ready for anything and everything, mister! But there's no way in hell we're letting you steal something that belongs to us, threats notwithstanding."

"Is that your final answer?" the Doctor asked, seemingly defeated.

Mitchell took a challenging step forward, coming within two feet of the older man, and seconds later a reluctant Billy Dillon joined him. Either one or both could have been dispatched easily by the Doctor's knowledge of Venusian Aikido, but where would that get him? Instead,. he took on the roll of what he appeared to them; an older man who couldn't possibly defend himself against two younger, spacesuit-protected gentlemen, and displayed a look of resignation, as he waved Dillon towards his yellow car, Bessie.

Dillon released a relieved sigh, stomped over to the front seat and picked up the device.

"Did he damage it?" Mitchell asked, not taking his eyes off of the Doctor.

Dillon gave the lunar device a cursory examination, noting that all the right lights seemed to still be blinking and replied, "Looks fine to me. Guess he didn't have time to sabotage it."

"Sabotage, indeed!" the Doctor frowned, puffing out his chest.  
"Stow it in the Rover, then."

Dillon did so, and climbed back into the passenger seat of the lunar rover.

"Okay. Will you allow us to leave?" Mitchell asked, tilting his head towards the garage door.

The Doctor shrugged. "Certainly." Then he had a thought. "You know, I'm presently between companions right now, and company on a trip or two to Metebelis Three or Astrozodia would be welcome- you'd find the galaxy much more interesting travelling in the TARDIS than in your ancient _Apollo _rocket, and I could do with a pair of truly intelligent, experienced space travellers. What do you say?"

"I've got a wife and kids back home," Mitchell replied monotonely, making no bones about his final choice.

"Mister Dillon?"

The younger astronaut almost seemed to consider it, until a glare from Commander Mitchell told him to drop it. "Uh, no, sir. Thank you. I'm kinda attached to things like baseball and hotdogs, and they probably don't have such things on Meta Lisa Three."

"Meteblis Three," the Doctor smiled, as he corrected him. "Suit yourself. Put your helmets on and get ready to disembark. I'll handle the decompression from the Console Room."

Without a look back, the Doctor exited the garage from the only other way out, other than the wide door to the Moon's surface. Dillon couldn't help but ask, "Think he'll let us go?"

Mitchell jammed his helmet on and held his mouth in a tight line, refusing to speculate or give the Doctor any ideas (just in case he was still listening in on them). He hopped into the driver's seat, and turned the engine on, which brought a momentary eyebrow raise to his face. Whatever fiddling the Doctor had done to the battery, it was now showing full power!

A few moments later, and the brilliant reflected light from the lunar surface cascaded within the garage, as the door raised once more. Mitchell didn't need to think twice as he lurched the vehicle into reverse, kicking up lunar dust as the big wheels spun out onto the regolith. They couldn't help but stare at the supernaturally-wide garage opening that extended several feet beyond the edge of the Police Box, and watch the door close. Mitchell backed up a little further, and just as he was turning to speed away back to the Lunar Module _Constellation_, he braked suddenly.

The so-called 'TARDIS' was fading away! The lantern on top began to flash rapidly, and in seconds all that was left to show that the Doctor and his 'ship' ever existed was the big square imprint in the Moon dust, and the wheel tracks that met up with it!

"How did he do that?" Dillon asked, unable to blink.

"I don't care, kid. All that matters is we get back to the landing site and set up this hunk of good ol' American know-how like we were trained to do! To heck with the Doctor's crazy fear mongering!"

As they scooted off back the way they came, Billy Dillon couldn't help but wonder if the gnawing in his gut was indigestion from the NASA food-packs, from the bumpy ride in the Lunar Rover or...the Doctor's threats of alien invasion.

From the safety of the Console Room the Doctor watched the image on the view screen of the American astronauts driving away, thinking that they'd won.

In a way they had won. Big time.

Just not _how _they thought!

He smiled as he rummaged through his smoking jacket pocket and retrieved a trio of signal-focusing nodes, tossed them in the air, and caught them, then placed them on top of the central column. Without them, the_ A.S.T.R.O._ was just a box with pretty lights and not the death signal the silly humans had inadvertently created.

The invasions would come, as many already had, but at least most of them would be delayed for decades, until humans and even UNIT were better equipped to deal with them, when he wasn't available.

He reached for the dematerialization lever that would complete his trip back to UNIT headquarters in London, when he paused. Driving on the Moon had felt strangely enjoyable, despite the urgency of disrupting _Apollo 19_'smission.

"Why not?" the Doctor murmured to himself, reversing the controls and landing hundreds of miles away from Mitchell and Dillon's location. "Another jaunt around the Moon, maybe in the Sea of Tranquility for Bessie and the man on the Moon!"


End file.
